


Perplexing Feelings

by amiraculousladybug



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Companion Piece, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Implied Relationships, Late Night Conversations, Originally Posted on Tumblr, POV shift, Someone Help Them, these kids are both a flustered mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 23:26:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12641454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amiraculousladybug/pseuds/amiraculousladybug
Summary: Chat Noir's relationship with Marinette has been changing lately, and she as Ladybug isn't sure how to handle it. One night after patrol, things will take a dramatic shift in one of two directions--both of which Ladybug simultaneously dreads and hopes for.A take on parts 4 and 5 of Peculiar Familiarity from Ladybug's POV.





	1. Confessions

**Author's Note:**

> I said I was going to write this, so here it is! I hope this clarifies things for the people who couldn't quite understand where Marinette/Ladybug was coming from in Peculiar Familiarity.

“My lady, can I ask you something?” Chat Noir asked suddenly.

Ladybug turned. Finally, he was going to bring up the hand-kissing. He had promised her last night that he would do it first thing, and when he hadn't immediately brought it up at the start of patrol tonight, she had started to wonder if he had decided not to go through with it after all. She steeled herself for wherever this conversation would lead them—no matter the outcome, she had a hunch that emotions were going to end up all over the place. “You just did,” she teased him. A smile crept its way onto her face. “But you can ask another question, I guess. If you want. What is it?”

All at once, Chat shrank in on himself, his gaze darting every which way. “I was just, um, wondering…” he mumbled as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. She nearly melted at the sight. Sure, she had suspected that he would be nervous about the matter, but she hadn't expected mentioning the matter of kissing her—Marinette's—hand to reduce him to near speechlessness. “…If you would prefer I didn't kiss your hand anymore.”

He'd gotten it out! An outrageously overwhelming sense of delight washed over her, and she had to fight very hard against the grin that wanted to plaster itself on her face. This was already a huge step for Chat. Even if he didn't follow through on the question, he had at least brought it up. And that meant that she as Marinette had to be at least as important to him as she was as Ladybug. Then she realized Chat was looking at her, and she forced herself to stop grinning like an idiot and at least try to look confused about this.

 _Ladybug doesn't know what's going on,_ she reminded herself silently. _I'm not Marinette, I'm Ladybug. And Ladybug doesn't know what's going on._ “Where is this coming from? You…you just change your mind about doing it, or…?”

“No,” he said in a rush, and immediately looked like he was internally kicking himself for answering so fast. His head gave a minute twitch, as if he wanted to look away again and couldn't bring himself to do so. “No,” he said again, softer. “That's not it at all.”

He looked so disappointed with himself that even Ladybug's relief at him actually fulfilling his promise couldn't keep a smile on her face anymore. Slowly, she approached him, reaching out to touch his shoulder. He seemed startled by the contact. “What's the matter, kitty?”

Eyes wide, almost as if he were pleading with her, he blurted, “I promised a friend I would ask.”

 _A friend?_ The word was like a slap in the face. She pulled away without really realizing what she was doing, gaping at him. Just a friend? The girl for whom he was offering to change his entire relationship with his superhero partner, just a friend? She wasn't stupid. She knew him kissing her hand was supposed to mean something. For him to change that part of their dynamic so suddenly, there had to be _something_ to their relationship as Marinette and Chat Noir that he thought was worth pursuing. But just a friend? Was that really all it was?

Chat was babbling now, obviously taking her silence as a bad sign of some sort. “I just, I made friends with this girl recently—just friends!” (He didn't have to be so adamant about that point, Ladybug thought to herself with grudging irritation.) “The girl you asked me to protect from the Evillustrator. Marinette. She walks around sometimes at night and I take her home so she doesn't get bothered by creeps or something. And we started playing video games together a couple weeks ago—she doesn't know my identity, I just go over as Chat Noir, don't worry—and we get along really well, and the last time we played and I went to say goodbye I kissed her hand without thinking. Just out of habit, you know? Since I usually do that at the end of our patrols and everything and so of course then she asked about it the next time she saw me. And long story short I said I might stop kissing your hand and she said I should talk to you about it.”

He finally came to a stop, short of breath from talking a little too fast, and took a breath. Ladybug, for a minute, wasn't quite sure what to say. He seemed so nervous that any response she could think of felt insufficient. She shook her head to clear it. This was Chat, for heaven's sake. They'd been partners for a long time now. She knew him. She could handle this.

“Why don't you tell me that again, kitty,” she suggested with a slight smile. “Only a lot slower this time. I want to make sure I understand what you're trying to say here.”

His expression brightened in obvious relief, and he relaxed just a little. “In that case, you might want to sit down. It's a bit of a long story.”

She sat down obediently. “I'm all ears,” she offered.

After a moment's hesitation, he joined her on the edge of the roof. “So, um…you remember that girl Marinette you had me protect when the Evillustrator attacked?”

“Of course I remember.” She grinned. “I know her pretty well.” It wasn't technically a lie. She _did_ know Marinette pretty well. She just wasn't going to explain that she knew Marinette well because she _was_ Marinette. “How did you think her Ladyblog friend got that exclusive interview?”

Chat looked like the proverbial lightbulb had just gone off over his head. “Oh.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I…I noticed her walking around one night after we'd finished patrol. And it was really late, and she was all by herself, so I thought that I should…y' know…walk her home, make sure she got back safely. Because, well, you know how creeps kind of come out of the woodwork this time of night. And I, um, I kind of know her personally—not really well, but…I know her, so I didn't want to just leave her by herself.”

She propped her chin in her hand, unable to help smiling a little. Of course her kitty had decided to play the knight in shining armor right from the start. “So you walked her home?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Just, you know, to keep her safe and all that. It ended up being good that I did, because she was locked out of her house and I had to help her get up to her terrace to get in.”

“Like Rapunzel or something?” Ladybug asked, quite unable to help herself.

Chat gaped at her. “My lady, you…”

Oh, crap.

She'd said too much.

He was going to figure out who she was.

“Shoot,” she whispered.

His brow furrowed a little. “Marinette told you about all this already, didn't she?” he asked.

What?

She stared at him, dumbfounded. He hadn't figured out her identity? Even after such a blatantly intimate detail? How? Then, slowly, as it registered that she hadn't accidentally revealed herself to Chat after all, she broke out smiling, and then burst into relieved laughter.

“Yeah,” she giggled, clutching her sides where they were beginning to ache from laughing too hard, “you got me. I've known pretty much since the night it happened.” Another half lie. She had known since then. Just not because someone else had told her about it.

He frowned. “You should have just told me that from the beginning,” he scolded. “That saves me a lot of explaining.”

She waved it off, still giggling a little. “It's fine. I only knew Marinette's version of the story, so it's nice to hear the other side of what happened.” She let go of her sides and leaned towards him. “Keep going. So you helped her up to her terrace, and…?”

“I saw her walking around again the night after,” Chat said. “So I took her home again. And then I kind of noticed over time that she was walking around at night a lot. I didn't want to pry and ask why, but I figured I could at least keep walking her home. She kind of complained a bit at first, but she never told me to go away or to leave her alone, so…”

“So you started doing it every night,” she finished for him.

“Well, not every night,” he hedged, an embarrassed smile making its way onto his face. “Just the nights I saw her. I don't think she sneaks out every night.”

“Probably not,” she agreed. _If only you knew, kitty._ “So what does this have to do with you kissing my hand?”

“We talk on the way to her house,” he said. “And we were talking one night, and I mentioned that I liked to play video games, and she said we should have a game night sometime. That was about…two weeks ago, I think? I've gone over for game nights a couple times now. But, um, the last time I was there, I screwed up, sort of. I'm so used to kissing your hand when we say goodbye for the night that I…I kissed her hand.”

So it really had been force of habit. She was more disappointed by the revelation than she'd expected.

Chat seemed to take her lack of response as a bad thing. “So, um…” he continued nervously, “I saw her again after that, and we talked about it and I…kind of sort of offered to start kissing her hand instead of yours. So I…um…wouldn't be kissing your hand anymore.”

An unexpected pang stung in her chest, though she wasn't sure why. It wasn't as if Chat was trying to hurt her in any way by suddenly stopping. And he _was_ only fulfilling the promise she had forced him to make in the first place.

She didn't dare to consider that she might be jealous of her civilian self for stealing her partner away.

She was Marinette, and Marinette was her. It wasn't like she was really going to lose him in any way.

Except that she was.

The hand kisses were a part of who they were as a team, part of their dynamic. He flirted like the dork he was, and she teased and did her best to keep things professional without completely shutting him down. If that changed, she wasn't sure what would happen to them as a team. Would they stay the same? Would everything else change too?

And why was he willing to risk changing everything for Marinette, of all people?

“Why?” she asked softly.

He stared at her. “What?”

“Why?” she repeated, a bit louder. She looked up at him and tried not to let her confused muddle of emotions show on her face. “Why did you offer to kiss her hand from now on?”

He didn't seem to know what to say to that. “I…well…that's…”

Something about his stammering clicked in her mind. It was the same kind of stammering problem she used to have around Adrien. Fumbling for something to say, restarting sentences a million times to figure out how best to word them, hands fluttering like anxious butterflies…

“It's okay if you say that you like her, you know.”

Chat was broken out of his incoherency immediately. “Like her?” he repeated. “N-no, I don't—she's—I think of her as a friend! I'd never…”

_Oh._

He was in denial.

There must have been something about the way she was looking at him, because when he met her eyes, he fell silent.

This was her chance to prod. Perhaps it was a little cruel of her, but she wanted to know how he really felt about her as Marinette. She wanted to know if her guess was right. And she knew exactly how to figure it out. “Then why do you kiss my hand?”

Chat looked like she had just announced that the end of the world was coming. “That's…because I…”

“It's not any different, is it?” she pressed when he didn't finish.

“It is, though,” Chat insisted. He still looked distressed, and she began to wonder guiltily if she had pushed him too much. “You're…you're my…partner. And Marinette, she's my…”

Pushed too much or not, he had her curious now. Ladybug leaned in, holding her breath without realizing it. “She's your…?”

Chat paused. Looked everywhere but at her. Scrunched his face a little in thought. Then an answer seemed to come to him. He shook his head a fraction of an inch, closed his eyes. He took a deep breath. Whatever he had decided on, it must be hard for him to say. She leaned closer, practically exploding with curiosity.

“She's my princess.”

 


	2. The Decision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chat's behavior is just as confusing to Ladybug as hers is to Chat Noir. Which really doesn't help when she's trying to figure out what they are to each other.

His princess?

 _His_ princess?

_His???_

Whatever Ladybug had been expecting him to say, it hadn't been that. No, there was far too much intimacy in calling her _his_ princess for her to have expected that in a million years. A friend, sure. His friend, that was fine. But his _princess?_

Her thought that maybe he liked her as more than a friend grew stronger.

“Your princess?” she echoed, quite unable to help staring at him in shock.

Chat looked for a second time like the end of the world was coming. His hands were fluttering nervously every which way. “Yeah, you know, like…it's kind of like I'm a knight in shining armor, right?” He flexed his arms and shot her a playful grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. “Protecting the princess from evildoers at night. So I…kind of call her Princess. I mean, I did before, too,” he amended. “When she helped with the Evillustrator. It fit at the time, and it still sort of fits, so it stuck.”

Oh.

Maybe she'd been wrong.

Maybe he really didn't like her as Marinette in that way.

The thought hurt more than she would have expected. She liked Adrien, after all, not Chat Noir, so why on earth should it bother her? Her crush on Adrien was the whole reason she had always avoided responding to Chat's flirtation. And still, the thought that Chat didn't have a crush on Marinette hurt. She managed a bare imitation of a laugh. “Half the girls in Paris would be dying of envy if they knew you called someone Princess,” she remarked.

“Would you happen to be part of that half, my lady?” Chat asked, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

The action was so characteristically Chat Noir that Ladybug couldn't help laughing again, this time for real. “In your dreams, kitty.” She shot him an amused smile. “Besides, I already have a special name from you. As if I would trade that to share a nickname with someone else.”

For a second, he looked equal parts surprised and flustered, as if he hadn't expected her to say something like that. Then he recovered, and nudged her shoulder gently. “I guess I can keep calling you my lady, in that case. Or do you prefer Bugaboo?”

She nudged him in return, just hard enough to make him tip for a second. “Three guesses,” she replied. “And the first two don't count.”

His smile was positively devilish. “Bugaboo it is, then.”

“Chat!” she protested with a laugh. It was nice, she thought offhandedly, being with him like this, being able to joke like normal. It made her forget for a minute that she might be losing him. She elbowed him playfully. “What should I call you, then? Cat-anova?”

“Was that a cat pun?” He shot her a delighted grin. “I think I'm in love with you even more now.”

Oh, so he could admit he loved her in jest, but ask him to tell her when the mood was serious and he couldn't get out a single word? She stuck her tongue out at him. Sometimes she really had to wonder if he actually liked her, or if he was just being the flirt she was afraid he might be. “It's your fault,” she said. “My brain comes up with these idiotic puns now, and I know that all the blame lies with my stupid kitty cat.”

“You're welcome,” he said, somehow keeping a straight face.

She groaned and flopped back to lie on the roof. “Sometimes, kitty, I just don't know what to do with you.” It was the truth. There were times, like now, when she wanted to hug and strangle him both at once. He could be insanely frustrating at times, but still she wouldn't have traded him for any other partner in the world. It was just hard to know how she was supposed to handle him when he was being so maddening yet endearing.

Chat twisted to glance at her, his eyes catching the light of the city and reflecting greenish gold. Her breath stuck peculiarly in her throat. “You've done pretty well so far just improvising.”

Ladybug snorted at the comment. “Because one spontaneous person in this partnership isn't enough.”

He didn't take his eyes off her as he untwisted his body to face her, crossing his legs. “It keeps things interesting, doesn't it?”

“You're not wrong about that,” she admitted. There was never a dull moment with Chat Noir around. Then, all at once, she remembered that there was something they were supposed to be talking about. The hand-kissing! Between all the joking and teasing, she had completely forgotten that this whole conversation had started because he was going to start kissing Marinette's hand instead. She propped herself up on her elbows. Stupid…! “So, is this … the kind of stuff you talk about with Marinette, too?” It was weak, but it was the only thing she could think of to bring them back on topic.

Chat blinked, obviously confused. He had clearly forgotten their original topic as well. “Huh?”

 _Stay on topic, stay on topic_ … She ignored the part of her that wanted to say “forget it,” and waved a hand vaguely. “You know. Just…fooling around like this. Being yourself, instead of hamming it up like you do for an audience.”

He pressed one hand to his chest in an exaggerated parody of offense. “I am _always_ being myself when I have an audience.”

His reaction was so hilariously over-the-top that she had to stifle the laugh that wanted to come out. She ended up snorting instead. “You know what I mean.”

All at once, his clownish drama faded away. He looked almost pained to be back on the subject of Marinette again. Was it really so bad to be talking about her? “We just kind of…talk,” he said. He leaned back on his hands, his gaze wistful. “We do joke around. When we play video games and stuff. It's not the same as you and me fooling around, but…”

“But?” she prompted.

He was practically cringing now. “It feels the same, sometimes,” he admitted. “The way she and I joke around, I mean. So, um…as far as your question goes…sort of? I try to be myself with her. But the way I act with her is never going to be identical to the way I act with you.”

 _But_ why _is it different?_ she wanted to demand. She wanted him to admit his true feelings, dammit. Whether it was Ladybug he liked or Marinette. For now, though, she settled for pressing what he had mentioned earlier. “Because she's your princess?”

Chat looked like a deer caught in headlights. She could tell he was kicking himself for ever mentioning that he called her Princess. “That's not it,” he blurted, sounding as if every word were being forced out of him against his will. She couldn't help smiling more at his flustered reaction. “That has nothing to do with it at all. It's just a nickname. It doesn't make a difference. Things would be the same if I called her something else. It's just that Princess happened to fit.”

 _The kitty doth protest too much, methinks._ She rolled onto her side, propping her chin in her hand. “You called her _your_ princess.”

“Only because I'm the only one who calls her that,” he countered.

_Oh._

Her smile fell instantly.

She had really thought she'd figured him out this time. Had really thought she was on the verge of getting him to admit how he felt.

But maybe she was wrong, and maybe that tiny stupid part of her that might have wanted him to admit it (which she refused to call a hope) should just have stayed buried where it belonged.

No, she had to pull herself together. This was nothing to mope over.

“So back to the hand-kissing thing,” she said slowly, “why do you want to start kissing her hand instead of mine? Why make the offer?”

“Well…” He paused, casting his gaze upwards in thought. “I guess … part of it is because I know you get sick of it sometimes. Pushing me away by the nose and all that.” She would have liked to stop him right there and correct his misunderstanding, but he kept going before she could say anything. “Marinette, she, um … she said she didn't mind. She actually said she thought it fit pretty well with me calling her Princess. You know, kind of like the knight in shining armor thing I mentioned earlier. A knight kissing his princess' hand and all that.” He gave a little shrug, a crooked smile making its way onto his face. “That's all there is to it.”

Ladybug worried at her bottom lip, unsure how to proceed. Yes, she thought, she had put herself into quite the pickle here. Maybe it would have been better to just say no as Marinette and leave it at that. But no, she'd just had to open her big dumb mouth and tell him what she really thought of it. Now here Chat was, talking about how obviously it would be better for him to kiss Marinette's hand rather than Ladybug's, and if it hadn't been for the fact that she _was_ Marinette she might have told him to just keep kissing only Ladybug's hand. This was nothing short of a nightmare. She looked up at Chat slowly. “I never meant for it to seem like I didn't like it,” she murmured, half hoping he wouldn't hear.

The thunderstruck look that came over his face told her that he had, in fact heard her.

Too late to turn back now. “It's cute,” she managed to blurt out. And once that was out, she couldn't seem to stop herself. “The hand-kissing. It's just…you know, we need to stay focused when there's an akuma,” _yes, Marinette, keep telling yourself that's the only reason,_ “and that was when you first started doing it, was when there were akumas around to fight. So then I just started pushing you away like that to keep us—you!—focused.” Oh, God, that had nearly been a fatal slip of the tongue. She needed to shut up. The problem was, her mouth seemed to have disconnected with the rational side of her brain. “And then you started doing it on patrols, and…well…I just meant to push you away to tease. I—I figured, you know, that was—that was our…our rhythm, our dynamic, so…” She could feel her face heating up, and had never been so grateful for the cover of her mask at nighttime. “It was never meant to actually push you away or anything. Just in good fun. And I'm really sorry if it came across as me wanting you to stop.”

There. It was out. Her stupid mouth had finally stopped talking. Now all she could do was wait for Chat's reaction.

For a moment, he looked like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders, visibly perking up. Then, abruptly, he wilted again, rubbing at the back of his neck sheepishly. “So, then, um…About Marinette…what should I tell her?”

Was he assuming that was a no? “Don't you want to kiss her hand?”

“I wouldn't have offered to do it if I didn't,” he reasoned. Then, as if he was horrified at what had just come out of his own mouth, he backpedaled. “I mean, just—she's a friend, you know? Like you are. She's not the same as you—obviously she's not the same as you—but I mean, it's…like you said, right? That it's in good fun.”

Of course he was trying to avoid the real question. She didn't know why she had expected anything different. Chat seemed to want to talk himself in circles when it came to his feelings about Marinette. “I meant,” she said, slowly so as to enunciate every word, “do you want to kiss her hand instead of mine?”

“If you would prefer things that way, my lady,” he replied.

Ladybug resisted the urge to roll her eyes in exasperation and waved off his response. “Forget what I want or don't want for a minute. Do _you_ want to kiss her hand? If you had to pick one of us.”

“'If'?” Chat echoed, latching onto the one word she really hadn't wanted him to latch onto.

 _Yes, “if,”_ she wanted to say. _Both of us is an option. I'm not going to make you stop kissing my hand, but if you want to kiss my hand when I'm Marinette, too, I'm not going to tell you that you can't do that either. I like both._ She fidgeted in embarrassment, twisting her fingers together. No, she couldn't say that. “There's no rule saying you can only do it with one of us and not both,” she pointed out instead. “If it's just in good fun and doesn't mean anything, then…”

He didn't seem to have realized that he could choose both. He stared at her, his mouth hanging open like some sort of goldfish. “You mean…?”

Silly kitty, she thought, not unaffectionately. Was she going to have to spell every little thing out for him tonight? “You don't have to stop kissing my hand if you don't want to,” she confirmed, “and you can kiss Marinette's hand if you want to. I don't have a problem with either.” She looked over at him, almost afraid to hear his reply, but he was still staring at her like he couldn't quite believe what she had just said. Self-consciously, she shifted her weight and made a great show of watching the traffic below them. For some reason, everything he did and said tonight seemed to be having a huge effect on her. But she couldn't let him know that. Not when she didn't even want to be aware of it herself. She was supposed to like Adrien, darn it all, so why was Chat making her heart skip a beat? “If you don't want to have to pick, that is,” she mumbled, not sure what else to say.

The silence that hung over them was deafening. Chat Noir still seemed to be struck dumb by her revelation, but she couldn't think of what else to say. _Please, kitty, say something. Anything. Even if it's just “I can't decide that right now.” Just please say something so I can stop feeling like an idiot._ He didn't speak, though, and eventually, she decided she might as well just bid him good night and hope for an answer in the future. “You…don't have to decide tonight. I can wait. We should call it a night anyway.” She stood and helped him up. And for once, she willed herself not to pull her hand away the second he was on his feet.

She had to prove she didn't mind him kissing her hand, right?

If she wanted him to choose both, that is.

But some little part of her told her that, even waiting for him to kiss her hand like this, even showing him that she really did like it, he wouldn't choose both. Chat Noir was the fiercely devoted type, and she knew that. His hand kisses were supposed to mean something. He wouldn't turn them into a trifle by kissing what he believed to be two different people's hands. It was a gesture to be reserved only for one person.

The only question was who he would choose.

She could tell he was trying to decide. He looked down at her hand in his, then up at her, and back down at her hand again. She tried to offer him a reassuring smile, to communicate that he didn't have to decide now, but it came out too wistful and bitter to be successful.

_I'm losing him._

For one fleeting instant, she thought he was going to kiss her hand. His grip tightened momentarily. But then he just laced their fingers together, and squeezed her hand. He let go all too soon. “Good night, my lady.”

So that was that, then.

_I'm losing him._

She made one final attempt at a smile, and didn't succeed any more this time than she had the last time around. So this was the end of the team dynamic she had come to love so much. True, she was happy that he had still chosen her in a sense. But she knew that to Chat, he had just chosen his princess over the girl he called his lady. And that meant that he would never really be Ladybug's “kitty” again.

“Good night, Chat Noir.”

_I've lost him._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everybody enjoyed the POV switch, because it was brutal rewriting this whole conversation. Remind me to never do something like this again.  
> Thank you to everyone who's read this and Peculiar Familiarity, especially those who have commented! Comments were what triggered this mini fic in the first place, so never think that your comments don't matter. :) I read and appreciate all of them!


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